Garden of heavenly delights

Today’s post will be a triptych, like those old three-part paintings (in case you were wondering what “triptych” means and if it does indeed have anything to do with “cryptic”). Except the parts are unrelated. Well, they’re related in that they all come through me, but that’s about as far as they go.

So, on the left side, we have mind versus matter. Down at Special Collections they’ve had me and my co-worker help move several palettes of cartons from Receiving down to SpecColl, and it’s been so fun! Almost every job I’ve had has been as a knowledge worker of one sort of another, other than a one-month stint doing asphalt with my uncle (I still wonder what influence I was under when I agreed to that!). Not that they’re all cerebral, of course, and they do often involve interactions with the tangible world, but on the whole they’re all in my head. Lifting boxes, however, is different. It’s easier to gauge success with manual labor, I think — move X from point A to point B, and you know you’re done when it’s at point B. Now, I’m not about to drop my librarian dream and get a job with UPS, but I certainly don’t mind getting out of my mind every once in a while.

And in the center, I watched Corpse Bride tonight. In one way, it’s a rather twisted movie, but not necessarily in a bad way. I mean, sure, it’s morbid (kind of) and the palette is very unsaturated and dark, but I can honestly say I liked the movie. (Except for the song-and-dance routines with the disco lights. ~sigh~) Anyway, the reason I bring this up is that whenever I finish watching a movie, most of the time I feel like I’m on top of the world, regardless of how happy or sad the movie itself was. And I didn’t know why. Tonight I found out. You see, if a movie portrays a romance of some sort, I vicariously end up placing myself into it (and I think everybody does this). But when the film ends, I still feel like I’m in that relationship. It usually lasts for an hour or so before fading away into my usual singular solitude. (And I guess this means I feel like I’m married to a corpse at the moment. :P)

We’ve made it to the right panel. A tree stretches along the left side of the painting, reaching its delicate fingers across the top into a leafy arch that shades a young boy sitting at its trunk, buried in a book. From beyond the boy comes a bath of light, whispering out from the ruddy-faced sun as it slips behind the forest on the other side of the lake. Engrossed in his book, the boy doesn’t see the cluster of fairies in the upper right of the painting, dangling from the leaves, fingers pressed to their lips and twinkles in their eyes.

Now it’s your turn. What happens next?

Ben, I’m responding to #3 over on your Sons of Adam post.

Oops, I meant #2. Silly me.

Ben,
The fairies are pressing their fingers to their lips to shush the littlest fairy. She is just too excited for the night to come and they don’t want her to disturb the little boy (you) because he has to get to the page with the “magic picture” just as the setting sun slips away into the twilight. As he nods off, the fairies sprinkle fairy dust on him and take him through a portal in the book’s magic picture where he will spend the night helping, playing and then reading to the them.

First he will lay an asphalt path the color of gold through a beautiful garden while taking pictures with a magic paint brush that paints fairy photos of flowers and bees and bugs. When he gets to a very fine large rock that resides at the end of the golden path, he will use his magic fairy paint brush, and with a couple magical sweeps of the brush, a fairy library will appear where the rock once stood. At this point he will paint a door that they enter and then paint book shelves and boxes of books that he will help the fairies unpack and put on the shelves that he painted.

When all the work is done, he will have the littlest fairy choose a book for him to read to them. When he opens the book it is full of blank pages like all of the other books on the shelves. He again takes the magic fairy paint brush and with one sweep of the brush, the boy’s daydreams and adventures from the previous day appear on the pages as a fairytale.

He starts to read the story to the fairies who are listening intently wondering if they will be mentioned in the tale. (Here is where you can embellish – think of the movie “The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm)

The story will end with the dawning of the sun. The boy will awake from a deep peaceful sleep, his head resting on a pillow which is the book with the magic picture in it that he had been reading the evening before. He is snuggled in a soft blanket of morning mist cuddling a real live talking baby teddy bear in his arms with natures creatures gathered around him waiting for him to awake and tell them of his dreams… stories of golden paths and magical fairy paint brushes that paint fairy photos and libraries and books full of wonderful things.

The fairies will be clustered in the leaves of the tree with their fingers pressed to their lips and twinkles in their eyes waiting to hear of their knight’s adventures, knowing that there will more fairy tales tonight when again the boy uses his magic fairy paint brush to paint another book telling about the adventures of his day.

rikker: No worries. :)

J: Very nice! You should work that into a story. :) (Oh, and just for the record, the boy isn’t actually me. Or at least he doesn’t have to be — I was imagining him to be a blond kid, myself.) Anyone else up for the challenge? :)

Thanks Ben. I’m pleased that you think it was nice, but I must confess to being a little disappointed. I was hoping that if someone put in a comment, *you* would tell us what happens next. I’m a sucker for a good story.

It’s Ben’s Fault - the power of suggestion.

:) (And if *I* told you what happens next, that would defeat the whole purpose! Maybe someday, but not now. :))

Ben,

Today I was working on one of the stories for the fairy library in my book and I had an interesting thought. The scriptures teach us that what is recorded on earth is also recorded in heaven which means that there are books in heaven with blank pages ready to be filled with our deeds. Therefore, my fairy library is kind of like the library in Heaven.

I am having so much fun with this project. I am writing it so that the fairytale is on the left page and the real story in on the right side. I am also going to paint the illustrations myself. Thanks for the fun; I would have never thought of it!

You’re very welcome. :) You’ll have to let me see it when it’s done.